Life can never be the same when you've had it with the
anguish of your mother scolding you for scoring low marks in Chemistry. I was a
borderline pass case with an entire day of taunts and references of that
classmate who had score 95 in the exam. After the morning debacle, I decided
that enough was enough and I would have to do something about it. In the
afternoon, I went to my classmates’ house which was in the same locality that I
lived in. His name is Binay. We were partners in crime; he had scored miserably
in Biology.
I was 12 years old and already taking big life decisions on
my own. We condoled each other and gloomily decided to take a walk near the
railway track beside our homes. To our surprise, a goods train was already
stationed there that day, unlike other days when I went to play on the tracks.
I told Binay with all the feelings in my heart that it was the perfect chance
for us to get away from all those chiding sessions at home which were planned
by our parents for the coming days. So, we decided to leave our town for good
and escape the evil that had befallen upon us by our respective teachers. We
climbed up the ladder of one of the bogies and sat down on the pile of stones
that it contained.
It was 5 o’clock in the evening and we had high emotions
pent up in us. The first thing that we did was throw stones into a nearby pond,
cursing the teachers who had got us into such predicaments. When we were
exhausted by the time we had used up all of our vocabulary, we sat down and
reflected on our day. We exchanged the ‘atrocities’ that our mothers had
subjected us to just for scoring less marks than the entire class. We were also
furious about the fact that our TV watching privilege had been revoked until further
notice. I almost came to a point where I got tears in my eyes when I realized
that my father was yet to return from his office and there would be a separate
jamming session altogether when he would come to know about my marks. We had
even cemented our belief that it was better to leave home than be treated like
this.
The time was half past 6 and with all our sentiments shared,
we started to feel rather bored. It was because we noticed that the train
wasn't moving yet. We decided that we should probably be a rebel and stay put
on the train past dusk. Anyways, no one would scold us once we were gone. The
sun set soon and it got dark. Mosquitoes abound and we realized that it wasn't
going to move. Ever. We condoled each other yet again and walked to our homes,
relieved that we hadn't boarded the train because both of us were damn scared.
